I'm getting the impression that Megatron doesn't understand how the whole "pacifism" thing works. I mean, the reason why he had such an insane number of "flowers" on the Necrobot's world was because of how many deaths he'd ordered in battle, not just because of people he'd killed personally. So I'm not sure that refusing to personally kill anyone but still sitting on the bridge and directing his companions on how best to kill people really counts as turning over a new leaf for Megs. I mean, by that logic Osama bin Laden was a pacifist.

I'm getting the impression that Megatron doesn't understand how the whole "pacifism" thing works. I mean, the reason why he had such an insane number of "flowers" on the Necrobot's world was because of how many deaths he'd ordered in battle, not just because of people he'd killed personally. So I'm not sure that refusing to personally kill anyone but still sitting on the bridge and directing his companions on how best to kill people really counts as turning over a new leaf for Megs. I mean, by that logic Osama bin Laden was a pacifist.

Hopefully that's touched on later.

Oh, and superpowered Tailgate can **** off.

Well, he did order 'no casualties'. Though given it's Whirl and Cyclonus he's talking...

next Wednesday. Number 49 slipped I believe due to I think one of the artists on a future issue getting ill so they delayed 49 as a precaution, but it looks like the slack has been picked up, so to speak

Slipped to 9th March. Apparently

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warcry

Oh, and superpowered Tailgate can **** off.

can I just quote this forever and ever and ever? Because that's what I'm going to do

Happy to wait another few days. My mind is already running through whats going on. The obvious is Tarn is holding them all at gun point before forcing them to transform and take their cogs (well to me, it feels the obvious). Is the distribution of the footage to announce a new Decepticon army under Tarn? Again, that's what feels obvious.

I have a confession to make: I read the leaked copy because goddamnit curiosity got the best of me. I have made no comment ANYWHERE about it, except one possibly cryptic one on Twitter. This has been bloody killing me, partly because there's a part of me that wants to read it properly in the format it was intended. Well, the digital version anyway

In a quick summing up, Great dramatic issue, reads at a very fast pace with lots of little character points along the way. Art is lovely, back up strip is great as a stand alone piece and then with a nice link to the main story at the end. Dialogue is at the top of its game.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Getaway twist. I mean I really like the twist but I couldn't help but thnk that its a stretch that so much of the crew backs him - and what they effectively do to the Autobots who are trapped along with Megs is incredibly barbaric when you think about it. I'm amazed Hoist and Blaster go along with this. I think I might have bought it more if it had of been a character who was there from the start and had built bonds from the beginning. Certainly I could buy them wanting to sacrifice Megs but the idea that they would sell a fairly sizable party to the DJD is... hmm.

Needs a re-read. Its a thumbs up issue but I'm not sure how I feel about the twist - to be fair though it was done really well. It's hard to imagine things going back to a status quo after this.

right then, how to make sense of More Than Meets The Eye 50 or as I am going to call it "How To Enrage An Easily Enraged Fandom And Possibly Write Myself Into A Corner" because after the revelation about halfway through the fandom are going to go into a apoplectic rage and, well, it's the DJD innit?

First up, the back-up strip is what Roberts does really well: framing a story as one thing, before pulling the rug out from under you and turning it into something else. It reads like a straight up ghost story, as well as filling in a few timely blanks from previous issues including the other half of the conversation Prowl had with persons unknown all the way back in issue one. Course, with the reveal that the crew aren't ghosts and in fact using the remnants of Brainstorm's experiments to go back into the past it's actually a little bit emotional. Then of course Getaway shows up going back in time himself which brings about more questions than answers. Still, it's fill of plenty of "aww" moments which after the frankly grim ending to the main strip is needed.

So to the main event and even when now there's plenty of character building, red herrings and dense narrative bombshells that it can occasionally become a tad overwhelming as all these snippets of this and that and twists and turns bombard you at every turn.

The message at the start sounds grim and is undoubtably grim but who's sending the message? Knowing what we know at the end it's supposed to be the DJD but why does Red Alert recognise the gun pointed at Nightbeat's head? Is Magnus revealing that he let his guard down regret about the mutiny or a possible switch sides by Megatron? It's definitely deliberate, but it's quite telling who *doesn't* send a message as opposed to who does.

Megatron again gets his moments in the sun, from giving the order for the Autobots to roll out, to lashing out at Minimus to, and this is a tad disturbing, getting a bit irate that the crew have decided to help organics rather than mechanicals. Roberts, again, has done a magnificent job of giving *just* enough doubt as to Megatron's true intentions - does he really still believe organic life is below him, when a while later he says he's never been happier?

Of course the big reveal was that Getaway is not only free but has managed to turn practically the entire crew over to his way of thinking, and essentially sent Rodimus and chums to their deaths. And this was, I have to say, absolutely ******* brilliant storytelling from the second he appeared on the communicator screen to the second he hung up. Absolutely magnificent because Getaway's right. He's very bloody right.

When he gets going on Megatron, we as readers should be saying "well he does have a bloody good point" because he does. Megatron was a genocidal maniac and his punishment is to swan about having adventures! What does that say to the memories of the billions of Cybertronians he killed? The hundreds of billions of others he massacred? They don't matter? Also, what the hell does it say about Optimus and his wishy washy "everyone can be redeemed" bullshit? Has Getaway just signed his own death warrant and that of the remaining crew by openly defying Optimus' orders as well as sending two dozen Autobots to their deaths (more on that later).

If Getaway had finished there, I would have been sated but then he rounded on Rodimus and I'm not going to lie, I read it and nodded my head as I did. Rodimus is a terrible captain, the entire quest has been about him, and his own stupid ego got a lot of bots killed when Overlord went on his rampage.

Of course, I was right with Getaway and until he partially revealed that he'd set the DJD on them at which point he went from "Autobot airing very real and factual problems with the command of the ship" to "bastard has to die" and it was brilliant. He's now the best bad guy in both books and possibly the best bad guy of the whole series because like all the best villains, because what they think they're doing is right they can justify their actions. In Getaway's case, he doesn't need to justify it because he, and everyone else, knows that Megatron has to die and Rodimus is a shit captain.

So, there are now a massive string of unanswered questions left, but the main one has to be: How is Roberts going to extricate this without the ending feeling cheap? I remember watching something, or maybe reading something, whereby the villains became so much more powerful that there was never ever going to be a satisfactory resolution without it feeling like a cop out. And I don't want a cop out. But the DJD are able to slaughter an entire alternate Lost Light crew by themselves, but now they have Deathsaurus and his crew for back-up AND they're only going up against about 20 or so Autobots. This is Kate Winslet looking at the blonde lady hanging off the stern of Titanic in that movie - there's no way the blonde is going to survive

Other questions/theory/speculation are purely that:

- What do Bluestreak, Riptide and Mainframe feel about Getaway setting the DJD on their friends, seeing as they've seen what they can do close up?
- Does Getaway really believe that the DJD will just execute Megatron and leave the remaining Autobots alive?
- Will we find out if Tarn is roller or my "way out of left field" suggestion of Dominus Ambus?
- Will Megatron switch back to the Decepticons just to save the crew?
- Will someone sacrifice themselves to give Megatron some proper fuel so he can go down fighting?
- Was that Mainframe having second thoughts?
- Are any of the crew still on the Lost Light aware of what Getaway's done?
- Now that the gear symbol is confirmed as a symbol of the Knights, will the Scavengers finally join up with a purged Lost Light?
- Are the rest of the Lost Light-ers performing a very long con on Getaway, including Atomiser?

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucking hell. The moment Getaway first appeared on screen and it twigged what was going to be over the page. That is probably the best plot twist we've ever had in MTMTE. And it works! I don't know if "Everyone turns against Rodimus" was always part of the long term plan or if it was something that was come up with post the Megatron decision, but it's something that could only really have worked in this situation. Of course everyone aboard would hate Megatron that much. We've been saying it since season 2 started that the general acceptance made no sense, and behold it made no sense.

This basically justifies and nullifies my biggest complaint about the book (and, as Terome pointed out to me on Facebook, the drastically shrunken new crew deals with Cliffy's issue about the size of the cast. By strange coincidence Cliffy went all Biblical on one of my retweets at exactly the same time), Roberts is such a bastard.

Doing Time Wars on my website has been a good reminder that you shouldn't judge big issue number epics until they're done, but as an issue in and of itself this may have been just about perfect in every way, looking for flaws is hard. The scene between Megatron and Velocity felt a bit "Oh shit, these characters need a moment quick!" (though it was nice in the backup to have Roberts remind--possibly even establish as far as IDW are concerned?--Hoist also does medic stuff so as to make sure Getaway doesn't look insane for getting rid of the accident prone crews only doctor) and Milne's Starscream and Scoop looked odd... but that's about it.

Some random EXCLAMATION MARKS:

Megatron's class (as Thunderclash seemed to be getting along with Megatron and seems like the last person who'd mutiny, what happened to him? Actually, was Perceptor amongst the traitors? That would be hard as well)!

The Holly Hop teleport drive!

In an issue that generally asks us to have sympathy for Megatron it's still careful to show us his remaining darkside with his reluctance to help organics.

When shit gets real, Ravage knuckles down and acts as part of the team with no snark.

Swearing! Perfectly judged as well (also removes the last barrier between the content of Eugenesis and the current comics. If not for Death's Head you could do a hypothetical "Official" reprint of that book with no qualms now).

One thing I suspect everyone is going to overlook because of what comes afterwards is the empty hollow interior of the planet. What can it mean?

Getaway. What a bastard. This also means the page of this issue I created myself at the signing last week in crayon had at least one totally accurate prediction on it (Getaway actually quite enjoying himself). Come to that, it also had swearing and the backup strip's confirmation that it's really all been about the pub. I may sue.

Whilst I can understand why the crew did what they did, there's some heartlessness here. Ten is basically doomed for liking everyone equally (and Magnus a bit more), he couldn't even have answered Getaway's questions. Unless it was phrased as "On a scale of one to ten, how much would you disagree with a coup?". I also read it as Mainframe's "Suggestion" was Ten, but everyone else seems to have assumed it was Whirl (who I'd have thought would have gone anyway as muscle), so I must have misread that.

Also, Velocity and Rung are punished for following their SPACE Hippocratic oaths and treating all patients equally. Which seems harsh (though if you want proof Rung is an appalling psychiatrist he totally misread the mood of the crew there).

My main worry going forward is the possibility of the reset. There's some big names amongst the Lost Light crew, having them turn out to be treacherous bastards (even with good reason it's a massive betrayal of not just Rodimus but the reader. No one should recover from this) is as bold a change as ending the war was. If it sticks, that would be amazing. But Megatron has his time case and the backup establishes a nice weak area in Swerve's that it could be used in. Is some historical rewriting about to occur?

Or, is Getaway lying out his arse and the betrayal is the result of selective memory re-editing on his part? Will the memory triggering device on the Necrobots planet be used to put things right?

Let's hope not.

On the flashforward, I'll make my guess that Megatron is the one threatening the crew as part of an elaborate bluff to throw the DJD off by making them think he was faking his Autobot switch for EVIL reasons all along (we've established Tarn is a slave to bureaucracy, if there was some formal reason for allowing the six hours thing, he'd be obliged to go along with it).

On the second story... Just lovely in every way. And it got everyone in there! Considering Pipe's luck I suspect we'll at least briefly meet a short aquatic triple changer early in season 3.

I can imagine most of the crew wanting to off Megatron because he's robo-Hitler, and the Allies weren't exactly clamouring to put Hitler in charge of the World Jewish Council post WW2. I can imagine some, not all, of the crew wanting to get rid of Rodimus because, well, everything Getaway said - they've not really progressed, it is all about Rodimus - is actually true. But what I can't imagine any of them actually going through with letting them get slaughtered by the DJD, because then they're not Autobots any more, they're Decepticons

"When did you first realize that he uses bad grammar to distract you whenever you raise an objection to something he wants to do?"